The present invention relates to a linear slide bearing and a linear slide table using this bearing.
This kind of bearing and table is widely used on the sliding mechanism of industrial machines such as machining centers, X-, Y- and Z-axis of numerical controlled machine tools, automatic tool exchange equipment, automatic welding machines, injection molding machines and industrial robots.
The conventional bearings and tables of this kind, however, are constructed such that the guide rail has a pair of ball-rotating grooves formed on each shoulder thereof and a row of load-carrying balls are run through each ball-rotating groove so that the bearing can hold the shoulders of the guide rail (the specification of the U.S. Pat. No. 3,897,982). Therefore, four grooves must be cut in each guide rail and it is also necessary to form an endless track for each ball-rotating groove, which in turn requires many machining processes.